Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Yeah it's a Big Deal

Brett Nottingham's HS highlights

Of course Brett Nottingham will not be just given the starting QB spot for the Lions this fall.

Of course nothing is guaranteed as far as wins and losses are concerned.

But as some readers have already pointed out, it's a HUGE deal that a player who was the presumed starter for a top 10 BCS program just six months ago has chosen to join us in Morningside Heights this coming
season.

Coaches and athletic department staffers cannot recruit transfers unsolicited. But let's give some credit to Head Coach Pete Mangurian and his staff, who clearly said the right things to Nottingham after he made the initial inquiry.

Columbia has had good transfers before, but no one was so highly regarded as a high school recruit and no one who was in line to take the QB position at a school competing for the national championship.

It's true most of us are biased in favor of the Ivy League for many reasons, but this is the kind of thing that should have happened before and should continue to happen at Columbia and the seven other Ivies.

Why?

Because, in case you haven't noticed, getting into an Ivy school these days has become harder than winning the Super Lotto. Any very talented college player with the grades should consider coming to this conference where they have a much better chance of standing out to the pro scouts and failing that, getting a degree that will be more valuable for them for the next 45 years of their lives.

13 comments:

jock/doc
said...

Welcome to the competition, Brett.How about a New Year's resolution for posters on this blog? Let each of us recognize that recruits and parents will be reading what we post. Let us try to keep it positive an respectful and to avoid personal attacks on anyone. It would be a shame if our posts caused a prospect to go somewhere else.

Nottingham's transfer to Columbia should have an enormous positive effect on recruiting, particularly on the West Coast. It elevates the Columbia program to a point where the coaching staff can now legitimately approach the very best student-athletes in the country and say Columbia Football is on the rise and Columbia University in NYC is the place to be.

Two Stanford alums who live in the Palo Alto area and follow the program tell me that we are getting a terrific athlete who was caught up in the change to Shaw from Harbaugh. Apparently Shaw first went to Nunes and then to his own recruit. Nottingham is apparently a terrific all around athlete with a great arm.

Old Lion, and we beat Stanford 79 years ago with the famous KF-79 play! Time to present that story. Jake, are you there? If you agree to cover this, don't forget to write about the adoring crowds that awaited the Lions' arrival at train stops across the nation on their way home after their big victory.

Jake, to me the most interesting aspect of Nottingham's transfer is your explanation that prospective coaches are not permitted to recruit transfer students. So Nottingham, on his own and of his own volition, compared all the FCS programs, if not all Division I teams, and selected Columbia as his best option.

Congratulations to all associated with the Lion program for such an endorsement.

As humorously narrated in one of his last books ("Vanity of Dulouz") Jack Kerouac left the CU football team in part because of his perception that Lou Little was obsessed with that Stanford game and the KF-79 play. In my opinion Kerouac was the all-time best writer/football player combination. There may be better writers and there were certainly better football players, but I see JK as the best combo. I'd love to know others' thoughts about this.

Willa Cather loved football (Nebraska especially) but could not play because she was a girl, more or less. Otherwise she might give Kerouac serious competition.

When I was a CU lightweight football player, my coach was George Furey, who accounted for CU's other victory over Stanford in 1936 when he ran back the opening kickoff. The score in that regular season game was also 7-0. Let's keep playing Stanford!

The Head Football Coach of Oregon Chip Kelly's first coaching job in 1990 was at Columbia University:

"Kelly isn’t a typical college football coach. He is the son of a lawyer. He is single. He grew up in New Hampshire. His first coaching job in 1990 paid him $4,000 a year to coach defensive backs and special teams at Columbia University."